IDEAS & TRENDS

IDEAS & TRENDS; Tourists Stumble Into the Line of Fire

By JOE SHARKEY

Published: April 30, 2000

MALCOLM NANCE was kibitzing last week with the owner of a San Diego travel agency who bragged that he had just sent some clients on a trek to Nepal.

''I said, 'Are you aware that they declared a state of emergency in western Nepal two weeks ago?' '' Mr. Nance recalled. ''The State Department has put out advisories on numerous armed robberies by Communist insurgents. I said, 'You know, you could become liable if your customers are kidnapped.' ''

Mr. Nance, a Navy veteran, is the chief consultant at Real World Rescue, one of the leading companies that teach travel safety to government and humanitarian agency workers, business travelers and, increasingly, leisure travelers who are roaming the third world and sometimes running into the kinds of trouble -- like kidnapping -- that aren't much covered in those cheery travel guides.

''You have terrorists now who specifically target Western tourists, like in the Philippines,'' said Mr. Nance. He was referring to an incident last Sunday on Sipadan Island in Malaysia, where 21 people, including 10 foreigners, were kidnapped from a luxury diving resort. Islamic rebels from the nearby southern Philippines claimed responsibility for the abduction. An American couple from Rochester, N.Y., managed to escape after they frustrated the terrorists by refusing demands to swim out to the kidnappers' boat.

In the last few years, tourists have become primary targets, Mr. Nance said. So-called special interest travel, encompassing adventure travel, eco-tourism and journeys to exotic locales, is the fastest-growing segment of the $519 billion United States travel market, according to industry estimates.

''The model victim is no longer the U.S. government official, no longer the corporate executive -- it's the first Western traveler who's in sight when a kidnapper's goals need to be met,'' Mr. Nance said.

Mr. Nance's vocabulary brims with alarming terms -- hostage-taking, for one -- that are seldom uttered by travel agencies. But a glance at the travel warnings stacked up on a State Department Web site (www.travel.state.gov) shows how trouble can intrude into an itinerary with the urgency of a sudden dose of food poisoning.

Examples abound. In March, two 19-year-old American women were murdered in a beach resort in Costa Rica where, five months earlier, two elderly Americans had been killed in a robbery. In 1999, rebels murdered eight foreigners -- four Britons, two Americans and two New Zealanders -- among a group of tourists at luxury camp sites in Bwindi National Park in Uganda.

In Algeria, ''U.S. citizens should not move anywhere in Algeria unless accompanied by a known Algerian citizen,'' the State Department said in a recent advisory. In Yemen, tribal clans have kidnapped hundreds of foreigners, including the Polish ambassador, over the last decade. American citizens were most recently kidnapped there in January and October.

''In a lot of countries like Yemen, if you're a tourist and you happen to encounter that tribe that has a particular complaint that day, they're going to say, 'Hey, let's take him,' '' said Mr. Nance, who says he is amazed at how many people ignore the State Department's ''Travel Warning'' list.

Mr. Nance's company, whose clients include organizations with worldwide reach like the Peace Corps, teaches ways to avoid risk, as well as survival skills to use when trouble does occur.

In some of the courses designed for government and military workers, and partly based on military survival and evasion training techniques from the Vietnam War era, trainers pose as terrorists to subject clients to a simulated ordeal of being abducted and held hostage.

Still, isn't there an easier way to buy your way out of potential trouble on the road? As a young comedian, Woody Allen joked that he refused to join a gym to work on his self-defense skills, opting instead to pay his body-building trainer ''to walk me home at night.'' In fact, many top business people and some leisure travelers now make their trips accompanied by travel escorts.

''Every once in a while we'll hear people say, 'Oh, can we hire someone to go to Africa with us?' '' Mr. Nance said. ''But that's having bodyguards, which is a very specific thing for people with very specific amounts of money.''

Adam Shuman, 29, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., calls himself a ''V.I.P. host.'' He said more and more people are hiring security guards to accompany them -- even on domestic trips.

''For people at a certain level, like in these Internet companies with a lot of money coming in really quickly -- people flying in on their Gulfstreams and Citations -- having security can be kind of a fashion statement,'' he said. ''Security looks cool, almost like the Secret Service. But having security also can solve a real problem. For one thing, it keeps them from getting bothered when they're in a restaurant or a club.''

Photo: A poster offering a reward for information about the killing of two American women in Costa Rica. (Associated Press)